I’m just about out of time in the (very generous) Unicorn Overlord demo, and I think I’m sold on the game. The automatic battles are a little odd, with all the strategy going into the configuration of your Soul Nomad-looking unit blocks, but I’m enjoying the battle scenes so far.
The other night, someone asked me if I was playing that new Final Fantasy game. I said no, but I’ve been playing Unicorn Overlord. I realized in that moment that the game’s title may not be one of its strengths. I had to explain that it’s kind of like a modern Final Fantasy Tactics and not whatever first impression the name gives.
I’ve been playing on standard difficulty, and I gather that later I’m going to have to rearrange my formations pretty often and not just come up with a good combination once that will always succeed. I guess I’ll find out whether doing that is fun.
The game was a little overwhelming at first, both visually in the battle scenes and when navigating the menus. But after a little while it all became familiar and made sense. Everything looks very nice.
The flowery English that I guess some people have complained about on the Internet doesn’t bother me at all. I’ll take that any day over the attempts at comedy that ruin so many games for me.
After how impressed I was with 13 Sentinels, I decided I’d go for whatever VanillaWare put out next even if it’s back in the fantasy genre, so I will be 100% on Unicorn Overlord once it comes out. Haven’t had time to try the demo, though. I should really do that.
Demo just ran out. I think it even let me go a little over the time limit to finish a battle scene.
One of the ways this game reminds me of FFT is in how I’ve been trying to figure out which unit type is good enough to have two of. I think the archer was the first one I recruited a second instance of in FFT.
One of the last things I did before time ran out was liberate a town that has a tavern. They sure put some work into the food graphics.
I read a thing somewhere saying that they’ve been working on this game for ten years, having started it about the same time as 13 Sentinels.
I still have an hour or so on the demo but am FFing. Will probably dive in on release. Getting new units is so nice I feel like a lot of the early units will just go in the paddock never to be seen again once I have enough of each class.
Does anyone know if you just get one rapport conversation from pairing people up or is that it?
my time with the demo is almost over, and while I’m not 100% sold on the auto-battles, I’m interested to see if it gets more complex over time. For the demo, you really just use whatever unit is strongest against the stage boss and you’re pretty much good to go. Most of the complexity involves unit movement, clock management and the battles just serve as a visual stimulation to tie it all together. it’s certainly works for me, but not sure if it’s going anywhere truly interesting just yet.
For a game that looks inspired by Tactics Ogre, it’s nowhere near as gnarly as that game (at least in the demo) which is a little disappointing because I would’ve liked to have seen something more tonally similar to Ogre. So far the story and characters are about as conventional as you can get, but it’s all been done so swiftly that I’m thinking the real weird stuff will happen later? This is my first Vanillaware, so not sure what their house style is.
On the rapport graph, each character pair has three hearts to reach. I noticed that some hearts are filled in with a design and my assumption is that only those ones trigger conversations.
I’m operating under the assumption that it’s going to remain conventional, but of course I’d like it if things took a turn. That said, 13 Sentinels had plot twists upon plot twists, arguably even too many by the end. So I guess we’ll see.
Having Josef as a taste of what’s later is neat but he does kinda trivialise a lot of encounters. He has deathflags all over but I can only imagine the game’s tutorials are just very extended as we haven’t really seen many enemy units which would require complex counters or cover each individual’s weaknesses. It’s usually just a pack of mages or a pack of housecarls.
13 Sentinels had a lot of twists I think to plausibly serve touching on so many scifi tropes without getting bogged down. I don’t recall Muramasa or Odin Sphere having a lot of twists but their stories have usually been solid if simple. Happy to be wrong and see Unicorn Overlord have a weird genre pivot or something.
i preordered that giant deluxe version of this game that apparently comes with a card game. i didn’t play the demo because i just want to be taken completely by surprise with this one, and i’ve never really been disappointed by a VW game, so here’s hoping this isn’t where they finally screw up
story wise, i do feel like most VW games are kind of a slow burn, starting off conventional, and gradually pulling you in with some actual meaning later on. 13 Sentinels sort of being the exception in that it gets going almost immediately.
You can continue your saved game from the demo into the full game.
I wonder how far you could go in the demo if you were perfectly efficient. Does it have a hard stop that you hit before the timer expires? I’m sure someone has tested that.
Edit: I just looked it up and the demo ends after you finish chapter 4 even if you have time remaining. I don’t remember what numbered chapter I’m on.
I still have the deck of cards that came with Growlanser: Generations. (I didn’t buy the deluxe edition but when I returned the used copy I’d bought because it was defective the store replaced it with the deluxe edition.)
I didn’t realize this was an Ubisoft Ogre Battle. You can run around the map, clicking on shiny spots to collect trouts, meeting a bunch of potential allies with bandit related issues and filling that quest log while ignoring their pleas.
Then when you’re Ubisofted out, you can trigger battles one by one to liberate territories. Then you give the trouts to the liberated villages to get some equipment, some of the three currencies, and the opportunity to garrison someone to get more stuff later. Etc.
Antagonists are really passive doing nothing while you’re conquering the map. There’s a real lack of mystery and tension, even compared to Fire Emblem
The strict time limit in battle feels seriously silly in that context, but it does feel like the key mechanic Ogre Battle has been missing all along; it was always very easy to play these games passively and never be in any danger.
In general every aspect of battle has been improved and I’m fairly sure they can carry me through a whole game. The FFXII gambits are incredible
One strong nitpick I have is how battle predictions will predict exactly which attacks are going to hit. Like, you ask your squad to attack an enemy and the prediction shows in advance you’ll do 0 damage, because it knows you’ll miss your two 70% hit attacks. So you have your squad attack someone else, obviously. It’s practically impossible to not do RNG manipulation playing Unicorn Overlord. Maybe this will make more sense later
I’m astonished by the degree to which I’m fine with the story being some of the most generic fantasy conceivable—I just want to lawnmower up the resources so I can do my town repairs and continue collecting honor for those all-important party upgrades. I will admit that I’m a little curious whether the game will punish me for being the most forgiving unicorn overlord possible, but the way I figure it, dead men don’t join armies.
I opened up the save file RYU on the Ogre Battle from the rental store and the guy was completely juiced and had Deneb and a dozen bad looking dudes and his reputation meter was rock bottom.
I think the goal was to have as little friction as possible to playing with your fantasy army. It’s just a lot of fun to build your guys and see them fight other guys. Everything else in the game just seems like onboarding to that.
I think you’re not supposed to do all the side objectives in Unicorn Overlord, but since the game has a 2D Mario world map it’s hard not to. Which kind of sicko would skip half the levels in a Mario game because they don’t have to do them?
On the hardest difficulty I’ve been outlevelling and outgearing everything and I’m bored. I don’t want to think about which side stuff I have to not pick to get an Interesting Experience (beelining the plot is not an option) and I’m kind of tempted to shelve the game entirely at the 9 hours mark to replay Fire Emblem Engage instead now that I’ve had my fill of The Graphics
